Another year, another deliciously sparkletastic J. Herbin anniversary ink. I like the J. Herbin strategy of releasing one ink at a time—there’s no agonizing decision-making to undertake, simply: here’s this year’s choice. Take it or leave it.

I’ll take it! As if there were ever any question…

This year’s release inaugurates a new J. Herbin ink category, the Jacques Herbin 1798 Ink Collection. Welcome improvements over the 1670 Anniversary ink series include: a wider bottle mouth that you can actually fit pens into, clear color-coded labels on the bottle and the box (as opposed to the 1670 series, whose boxes were labeled with mermaids and french hieroglyphics), and the decorative improvements of using a satiny cord around the bottle (silver grey to indicate the sparkle type??), and the J. Herbin ship logo on the bottom of the bottle (which will handily identify all my enemies when I inevitably have to smack them in the forehead with my ink bottle..?).

Like a jewel! A deadly jewel…

Whether anything has changed about the ink itself, I can’t say, but in my experience no improvements were needed. Though I have heard tell of others who have had pens get clogged, I have committed the most heinous and egregious of pen hygiene practices with the shimmery Herbin inks and experienced nary a consequence (but I do not recommend doing as I do; don’t hold me responsible if you screw up your pens). I’ve had Amethyste de l’Oural loaded in a Pelikan M205 with broad italic nib since July 5th, and the pen has started up without fail every time I take the cap off.

I had a caption here, which I’m sure was most clever and perfect, but the internet ate it and now it is lost forever, much to the detriment of society

Amethyste de l’Oural is a rich, vibrant purple, brightly saturated, leaning a hint of a bit more toward blue than red as far as purples go. Shading is good, but no sheen. I’ve piled this ink on the page to try and get it, but sheen is not there. Compare it to some of its sheeny 1670 brethren:

Note the unquestionable sheen on Rouge Hematite, Emerald of Chivor, and Caroube de Chypre

But shimmer and sparkle we’ve got in ready abundance. As with other shimmer inks, make sure you shake the bottle thoroughly (I shake until there’s no more shimmer particles on the bottom) before filling up your pen to get maximally even sparkle distribution. In a break from the 1670 inks, 1798 Amethyste de l’Oural features silver shimmer rather than gold. What I love about these sparkles in particular is that if you look closely you can see hints of other colors, pale pinks and blues among the silver.

LOOK CLOSELY! GAZE WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!!!!

This ink is another winner. It doesn’t have perhaps quite as much going on as Emerald of Chivor, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a beautiful ink in its own right. Load up your favorite broad, stub, italic, and other such vast juicy nibs with this ink and enjoy.

If I were to guess, and this is just a guess, I’d say this is J. Herbin Vert Pré. It is a very limey green (by which I mean lime-like, not archaic-derogatory-term-for-Brits-like)

Fun fact: up until I received this pen, I would have sworn I’d already reviewed its felt-tipped older brother, the Tradio Pulaman “fountain pen” marker. Somewhere I’ve got the pictures, and the writing sample; I just never did the actual review. I keep wanting to reference a review I haven’t even written yet, and for that, I apologize. I’d also like to thank JetPens for providing this sample (and this lovely green J. Herbin ink cartridge) for review.

Snap cap, the second most convenient fountain pen type (the first being the completely monopolized retractable)

I’ve got to break down this design three ways: the basic overall design, the black pearl coating, and the wonderful little window. Design: all thumbs up. Simple, attractive, modern work of pen designing art. Look at that cap. Look at the window.

So sleek! Such curves!

This might be my favorite part. You can see the nib! There it is! Hi! Wave at the nib! I wish I could see all of my nibs even when capped—the nib is the quintessential fountain pen part!

See the seam on the cap? Don’t lie; you totally do

This black pearl finish is where I start to have mixed feelings. It feels smooth. It looks cool. But it makes the seams on the cap stand out more (they’re smooth, as smooth as with the matte black body on my Tradio Pulaman), and stand-out seams can cheapen the look, no matter how well they’re smoothed. Also: smooth surface picks up skin debris like you paid it to collect every discarded cell. We’re talking mad crazy. This is fingerprint/handprint city, in a way that the matte surface definitely isn’t. If you’re a stickler for cleanliness, this might drive you insane.

Why not shiny black pearl grip? Why the discontinuity?

Black grip combined with the black pearl body? Not sure how I feel about that. Two toned nib? Good choice. The cap posts securely (though I’ve read of problems with similar models) and is almost necessary for so lightweight of a pen. It feels like it could just float out of my hand.

Says “IRIDIUM POINT Pentel” on the top, but that wasn’t quite as attractive as this close up turned out to be

On exceptionally smooth Clairefontaine/Rhodia papers, a problem emerged: this nib has got undeniable butt cheeks, the result being times where the ink doesn’t want to get on the page, as capillary action is holding the ink up in the crack instead of bringing it down to the where the cheeks touch the page. It happened so bad on the S in “Smooth” on the writing sample that I had to go back and write over it again until ink happened or there would have been no S at all. I busted out my eye loupe to confirm, and sure enough:

Cheeks, people; two of them.

The cheeks weren’t a problem while handwriting this review in cursive on Leuchtturm 1917 ruled medium notebook paper. It’s been a good tactile nib on this paper, no flow problems, but I know I won’t rest until I’ve smoothed out that butt.

Not only can you see less cheekiness, you can also see where I got too close with the camera and got ink on my lens

At this price point, the Tradio is in direct competition with the Lamy Safari. The Tradio line can’t compete on color and nib options (there’s only medium nibs, and only a handful of colors, though I did find that the Tradio Pulaman body and cap are fully compatible with the fountain pen bits), but the Tradio has two big advantages going for it: no proprietary cartridges (takes the standard international cartridges) and rounded grip (as in, not faceted-sculpted-telling-you-how-to-live-your-life-and-grip-your-pen-type grip).

Carry it around, it won’t weigh you down

The Tradio TRF100 is a decent, very lightweight plastic body beginner fountain pen. Some simple nib smoothing may be needed to achieve peak performance, but for me this pen will find a comfortable home as a knock-about work pen.

This color is supposed to be a pretty striking inky embodiment of red hematite (there’s a perfect picture over on the Fountain Pen Network review/thread by mhphoto; google results in several pictures that look like some kind of ground hamburger stone). I promise you I shook my ink sample before filling up my pen, but I never got any gold sheen; from what I’ve read around online this may be a function of this sample coming from newer, less golden-infused stock. The base color of the Rouge Hematite is beautiful and saturated (unlike most J. Herbin inks I’ve bought, which all tend to look a bit washed out), but all that pigment comes at a price.
This happens. All over. The underside of the nib is completely covered in a layer of pink ink crust. This will be a project cleaning this pen back up again. Until I can get my hands on a sample that exhibits the lovely sheen of gold I don’t think I’ll be springing for a bottle of this stuff. But samples are always fun to try.

This blog post will be typed with my keyboard hidden under my desk, where my cat can't get to it. In retaliation, this post will also be written with over 70% of my screen vision blocked by a furry feline presence.

L. L. Bean: The very best boot for taking pictures of your fountain pens on

I held off on buying one at first, since the VFM came in a beautiful plum-colored body…but not for the fountain pen model. But I caved on my second-ever trip to the Art Brown International Pen Shop, and added this pen to a pile of Noodler’s Ink bottles. It’s a very modern-office kind of pen. Thinner-than-your-average-fountain-pen profile, matte metal body, minimal branding beyond the “White Dot®” on the clip, and the name SHEAFFER printed three times around the trim.

This is the brand that offers an 18 karat solid gold fountain pen, WITH A DIAMOND ON IT, for about $20,000. How much attention are they even going to bother with on a dinky $15 pen?

I have been dissatisfied with the low-cost fountain pen options from some other brands; they may have great high-end products, but when the entry-level options are so shoddy, why would I want to risk throwing more money down that hole? I am delighted to say that Sheaffer is no such brand, and this, my friends, is an excellent pen.

They weren't BSing that whole "Sheaffer® White Dot® of quality" thing. Does this mean, if I extract these Dot®s and apply them to inferior fountain pens, they will be magically transmogrified into quality pens?

This thing is the real deal. This is what you get and give to the fountain pen curious individual. It takes standard international cartridges, it’s simple, it writes wonderfully.

It's not going to win a fountain pen nib beauty pageant, but then again, no one is, because those don't exist.

It only comes in a medium nib at the time of writing this, but I think it’s on par somewhere between a medium and a fine. At the very least, it’s not too thick for my blood. I’ve been favoring this pen for work lately, because when I need to write something, I need to write it fast; the cap pops right off, pen hits the page, and everything is 10-4 writing happy funtimes. I daresay this pen might currently be the front-runner for my favorite in the Approximately $15 Entry-Level Fountain Pen category.

No frills, no fuss, just fountain pen, pure and simple, and I can’t argue with that.

I couldn’t find a handy link on the Art Brown site for this particular pen, so instead, Goldspot takes the link: